


The Punk Rock Paladin

by concertigrossi



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Family, Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2782043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concertigrossi/pseuds/concertigrossi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raising a boy as a single mother is hard enough.  Keeping said boy out of trouble when he's got an iron-clad sense of honor, a hair-trigger temper and less common sense than the average goose is damned near impossible.</p><p>Julie Coulson, for one, blamed Steve Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Punk Rock Paladin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mandergee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mandergee/gifts).



> This is for Mandergee, who wanted Philinda, and who I fervently hope likes backstory. :)
> 
> With thanks to gth6943e, Jep and Ishymaria for their excellent beta-reading skills

If you’d asked Julie Coulson when the problems started, she would have said the problems started with Steve Rogers.

(To be entirely fair, the problem started earlier than that. There were a whole host of issues involved. But she also wasn’t entirely wrong – Steve Rogers was definitely a precipitating factor.)

It was at Robert’s funeral. She’d wept her tears out the night he died, sobbing into her pillow so that Phil wouldn’t hear and cursing the universe for making her tell her twelve-year-old son his father was dead. After that, she walked through the proscribed rituals, numb and cold, giving rote answers to rote condolences, and generally ignoring everyone else’s plans for how she should run the rest of her life. From this, there was no respite to be had: there was her family, who wanted her to move them back in with her parents in Wisconsin, and Robert’s, who were determined to see his only son brought up near his kin in Arkansas.

Neither of these were even remote possibilities, as far as she was concerned.

Nevertheless, she got cornered at the wake by some ninny of an in-law – one of Robert’s cousins whose name she couldn’t be bothered to remember – who decided to bestow upon her yet more unwanted parenting advice.

“He’ll need a role model, you know. A hero to look up to. All fatherless boys do – where else is he going to learn to be strong?”

She’d muttered something inane back to him at the time, but she never forgot it, in the years to come. Because clearly, no strength was needed to come home and care for a boy after she’d worked a double-shift at the hospital and her feet were swollen and her back was on fire and Phil was presenting her with yet another note from the principal.

No, that required no strength whatsoever.

“Steve Rogers!” The annoying cousin snapped his fingers. “A good, wholesome, old-fashioned gentleman.”

She forced a smile. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

She’d turned to storm away after that encounter (it was amazing, the bad behavior a grieving widow could get away with) and literally bumped into one of the few mourners she didn’t recognize.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” she said, and looked up at him. He was tall, dark-skinned and appeared to be in his mid-twenties. She had the briefest impression that, from the look in his eyes, she was being measured up.

“All my fault, ma’am.” He held out his hand. “We haven’t met, Mrs. Coulson, but I had occasion to serve with your husband briefly, and I came to offer my condolences.”

“Thank you.” She took his hand and shook it. “It's a pleasure to meet you,” she said, still on autopilot. “When did you two work together?”

He smiled a little. “It's not something I can discuss, I'm afraid. But your husband was a good man, one of the best I've ever met, and I wanted to let you know...” He held out a business card, which she took. “If there's anything at all I can do for you or your son, don't hesitate to call.”

“That's very kind, Mr...” she glanced at the card, “Mr. Fury.”

“Please don't mention it,” he nodded. She was called away at that moment – another importuning relative – and by the time she turned back, the man was gone. She tucked the card away in her purse.

Somehow they managed to get through that awful, awful day and went home. When Phil, who had been still as a statue all through the funeral and burial, finally broke down in tears, it was almost a relief. She held him and let him cry it out, smoothing his hair and kissing his forehead until his sobs stopped. He'd not cried in her arms like that since he was a little boy of six or seven, and it broke her heart all over again.

It wasn't until later that night, after she'd fed them both and tucked Phil into bed, that she thought once again about Mr. Fury. She pulled the card from her purse. “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD,” it read.

“What had you gotten into, Robert?” she whispered to herself. She'd heard shadowy rumors about SHIELD but nothing more. Much bemused, she tucked the card away in her jewelry box, and for the recent future at least, forgot about it. She had much bigger problems on her plate.

 

….

 

The largest of these, dwarfing even her considerable grief, was her worry about Phil in the aftermath. He'd always been a quiet child, but, in the months after the funeral, he just seemed to retreat further into his shell. Both her family and her in-laws had flounced off back to their respective homes after she'd refused to come with them, so it quickly became just the two of them rattling around in a house that was so very obviously missing an occupant.

She’d never intended to act on the Annoying Cousin's suggestion, but she’d started going through her husband’s things (once she felt she could bear it) and found one of the old Captain America trading cards and a box of ancient comic books. Desperate to find something to distract Phil at this point, she’d given them to him, and told him she’d take him into the city to a comic book shop to get more, if he wanted.

Little did she know that she’d just created a monster.

He raced through the comics that night, rode his bike to the library the next day, and came back with a biography of Steve Rogers and a big compendium of the original comics. Within a year, he’d read everything the local library had on Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandoes, and had started to pester her to take him to the university libraries in the city. Every cent of his pocket money went to comics, Captain America posters covered his bedroom walls, and he was up at 6:00am every Saturday morning to catch the old Captain America cartoons that came on just as the local TV stations started broadcasting for the day. He even started taking on odd jobs around the neighborhood just so that he could add to his action figure collection.

“Are you sure that's wise?” asked Mabel Dougherty at the regular Sunday post-church coffee klatsch. “One of the boys in my nephew's class? His cousin started to hang out at the comic book shops and got into that Dungeons and Dragons game. That leads to the Occult, you know!”

The table was evenly split between the women who nodded sagely at this profound insight, and women whose smiles had just gotten awfully fixed.

Julie Coulson fell into the latter half. “Well, Phil's getting straight A's at school, and his Scoutmaster can't say enough nice things about him. I'm sure he'll be fine.”

….

 Pride goeth, as they say, before the fall.

….

 As far as Julie Coulson was concerned, one of the best things about her son's Captain America obsession was that it was so easy to parlay that into interest in so many other subjects. She could discuss Peggy Carter and feminism, Gabe Jones and the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Morita and the Japanese internment camps. They could talk about what it was like to grow up poor in the 1930s, and how the New Deal tried to fix those underlying socioeconomic problems. They could talk about World War II and its aftermath, how the Cold War came about, and how it was still shaping their world over 30 years later.

What she didn't count on, when trying to instill this sense of social justice into her son's psyche, were the changes that come when a boy transitions from a child who believes that the world is a fundamentally just and good place to a teenager who can start to truly see its cracks and flaws and inequities. And she'd been blind to the fact that her son's hero, a good and noble man, nevertheless took it upon himself to right every wrong he encountered, even when he was the weakest of underdogs, and never ever backed down from a fight.

And so she was stuck with the problem that has bedeviled parents since time immemorial: what do you do when your child does the wrong thing for the right reasons?

He got into his first fight at 14. She didn’t think too much of it at the time – just teenaged boys being who they were, young stags with their blood running hot. She never could get the details out of him, except that it had somehow involved his friend Sarah MacDonald and Jeff Crosby, the star quarterback of the Shermer High varsity team. She’d given Phil a stern lecture about fighting, but figured that it was punishment enough that 1) he’d definitely come out on the losing end of the battle, and 2) that he’d have to go to school on picture day with a hell of a shiner and a fat lip.

(She would, oddly enough, get some insight to that particular scuffle some years later. Jeff Crosby’s football career came to a screeching halt when he was arrested, tried for and convicted of several rapes in the town where he went to college. It was the hot topic of gossip in their small, scandal-starved community, but it didn’t escape Julie’s notice that Sarah never commented on it - she just listened to the talk with an odd, almost pleased expression on her face.)

That was the first fight.

It was definitely not the last.

Frankly, if she ever wrote her autobiography, she would title this section of her life: “He’s not a bad kid, Mrs. Coulson, but…”

When this started to become a pattern, she tried to reason with him. “I understand what you're trying to do, Phil, and it's admirable. But you can't take on each and every bully on you run across! You'll keep getting in trouble with the school, and it'll only hurt you in the long run. You need to go to the teachers...”

“What are the teachers going to do? They never catch them in the act, and if even they do, they just send a note to their parents. And if their parents gave a hoot about them anyway, they wouldn't be the bullies! It's pointless!” he’d shot back.

That was the biggest problem: she knew he wasn't actually wrong.

The number of reported fights did go down after that, but (from the rumors she'd heard) she was pretty sure he'd just gotten better about hiding his tracks.

And then there was the matter of the music.

She thought she'd prepared herself well for this one. It was a given, after all, that teenagers would find some form of rock and roll that would annoy the snot out of their parents, but she'd barely even read about punk rock in Newsweek before she started to hear it blaring out of the hi-fi in Phil's room.

She'd knocked on the door. Several times, and really loudly before he heard her.

“What on earth is this?” she asked, aghast, after he turned the volume down.

“It's the Clash, mom. They're awesome!”

“What happened to the Beatles? Or maybe some Simon and Garfunkel?”

“No way! Who wants to listen to a bunch of stoned, navel-gazing hippies? Or, even worse, _disco_?” he asked in scathing tones.

“It's very... loud.”

The look he shot her was pure teenaged disdain. “It's raw, Mom! It's real!”

She raised an eyebrow. “Just keep the volume down.”

The next round of calls from the school involved dress code infractions, which came as complete and utter blindsides. She saw Phil off before she went work each morning, and while he could have done with a haircut, in her opinion, his clothes seemed entirely normal.

It was only when she discreetly followed him in the next day that she realized she'd birthed a quick-change artist. A trip to his locker and a trip to the bathroom, and five minutes later her sweet boy had been transformed into Sid Vicious. (She was quite proud of having learned enough about “the scene” to make the reference correctly but, in the towering fight they'd had when he got home that day, Phil had been quite insulted by the comparison. “The Sex Pistols are _anarchists_ , Mom! _ANARCHISTS._ ”) Every argument she’d ever made to him about not judging by appearances, about counting someone’s worth by what was on the inside got thrown back in her face. She’d finally imposed her will on his wardrobe by parental fiat, but was pretty damned sure he’d be back with the safety pins and eye makeup as soon as he thought he wouldn’t get caught.

The only two saving graces were that he somehow managed to keep his 4.0 average, a miracle considering his constant appearance at the Saturday morning detention sessions, and that he was apparently sticking with the Boy Scouts, for reasons that passed her understanding.

“I don’t get any of this,” she said to Pastor Richardson. “I’m at my wits’ end.”

“Well, I can almost guarantee you’ve got the only punk-rocking boy scout in the state of Illinois… did you ask him why?”

Julie laughed despite herself. “’A healthy mind in a sound body,’ was all he’d say. I think he likes the military aspect of it? And they’re certainly not going to take him in JROTC, not with his record… I just don’t know what to do.”

“It’s an impressive case of adolescent rebellion, I’ll grant you, but I’ve never seen him be anything but kind to anyone weaker than himself. Even with the fighting, I’ve never heard of him tangling with anyone who, frankly, I didn’t already think deserved a beating. I’ll talk to the Scoutmaster, make sure that he’s still in good standing. The structure can only help. At heart, I think, he’s a good kid.”

“He’s a good kid. He’s a good kid,” Julie repeated. “He’s going to be a good kid with criminal record if this keeps up.

….

Julie was more right than she knew.

That summer saw her promoted to nurse-manager of the ER, a job that came with a much needed raise.   She tried her damnedest not to have to work any evening shifts, but it couldn’t always be avoided and so she was at the hospital when the next blow came.

That particular night, as per usual, an ambulance rolled up and disgorged a gurney, along with a couple of EMTs and a police officer.  

“18-year-old female found unconscious at the scene, cyanotic and seizing, likely heroin overdose...”

She raced to follow the patient into the trauma room, but Officer Gardener stopped her, and the situation abruptly stopped being routine.

“Julie, you've got to come with me.”

“I can't, Frank, can't you see? I'm on duty...”

“Julie, no, you've got to come with me, it's about Phil.” He stopped and leaned in closer to whisper, “He's been arrested.”

She stopped dead in her tracks.

“He's been what!?” she rasped out. Her stomach felt like a block of ice, and for a good fifteen seconds she forgot how to breathe.

“Let's go, I'll explain on the way.”

She got her coat, arranged for a substitute nurse, and followed him blankly.

“What happened?” she asked once they were in the car and under way.

“He was at a party out in the woods off Route 29. It was mostly just beers and a couple of joints, but a few of the kids brought their kit, and, well, you saw…”

Julie put her head in her hands.

“Now, before you get upset, he’s been arrested, but he’s not going to be charged with anything. We nabbed one of the other kids who’d been at the party when it happened, and we got the whole story. Basically, when the girl started seizing, the rest of them panicked, and took off. With no help from any of them, he carried her half a mile until they got to the state highway, laid her down and started rescue breathing. He flagged down the first car he saw even though it was a state trooper. She’d be dead if he hadn’t been there.”

“Had he been drinking?”

“No. The breathalyzer came up clean, and he’s not acting at all stoned.”

“So why’s he under arrest?”

“Basically? So Sarge can try and sweat the names of the rest of the attendees out of him. He’s already given up the kids who brought the drugs, but he won’t name anyone else.”

Well, that was something. “He’ll still have an arrest record…”

“And I will personally see to it that that record gets lost and never gets found. Julie, if it wasn’t for him, we’d have a corpse on our hands tonight. He’s a good kid, but…”

Julie could have screamed.

They’d put him in a holding cell to await her arrival. To her utter lack of surprise, he was wearing a fedora, eyeliner, a ratty old trench coat, a Ramones t-shirt, and those godawful safety-pinned jeans. She was torn between horror at seeing him there and hope that this treatment might finally hammer some lessons through his thick skull.

They released him into her custody, no charges filed as promised. Frank drove them back to the hospital so she could pick up her car, and she drove them home. She didn’t trust herself to say anything to Phil until they were alone, and he was apparently more than happy to go along with the sullen silence.

“Do you frequently go out to parties like this? Have you been out drinking before?” she asked once they were on the road.

“I don’t do that shit, Mom! I’m Straight Edge!”

“Language!”

He rolled his eyes and stared out the window.

She took a deep breath. “I’m glad you don’t drink or do drugs. And you might not believe this, but I’m proud of what you did tonight. You made the right call in a tough situation.”

She paused.

“But I don't want you hanging out those kids anymore. They're bad influences.”

“They’re only bad influences if I let them influence me. Which I don’t.”

“It doesn't matter. They're beneath you, and you don't need them dragging you down.”

“They're ' _beneath me'?_ Why!? Because they're different!? Because they don't conform to some bourgeois idea of normal!?”

She yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, pulling the car off onto the shoulder. Swelling up with righteous fury, she turned to him and hissed. “Because they ran off and left a girl to die to save their own hides, that's why! Because that's not the sort of person I want you associating with! Do _not_ test me on this!”

He stared at her like a deer in the headlights, his calculated cynicism gone. Wide-eyed and looking much younger than his sixteen years, he nodded.

They rode home in absolute quiet. She imposed a three-month house arrest as a punishment for sneaking out, and (for once) got no argument.

….

As he said he would, Frank made the arrest record go away, but enough people had seen Phil Coulson being brought into the station in cuffs that the gossip couldn’t be stopped. Those who knew the true story considered him to be a hero, but not everyone was so kind. When Julie tried to join the Sunday coffee group that week, the conversation abruptly stopped when she approached the table. She turned on her heel and stalked away, but not fast enough to miss Mabel’s comment, “I’m telling you, they start hanging out at the comic book stores, and they get mixed up with some bad elements…”

The absolute, final straw came the fall of his junior year in high school. She and the principal’s secretary were practically on first-name basis at this point.

“What is it now?” asked Julie wearily.

“This time? He’s broken the school’s academic honor code.”

“WHAT!?”

“He misrepresented another student’s work as his own.”

Julie was in utter shock. The fighting, the arguments, the rebellion, all this she’d gotten used to and known to be in character, but she would never in a million years have suspected him of cheating.

“You’d better have a good explanation for this,” she began as soon as she got home.

“We were making a point,” Phil glowered.

“Explain.”

“Mrs. Jankowski fails the black kids in her class and lets the white kids off easy. We went to the administration, like you said, but they didn’t believe us. So Denise and I traded papers, put our own names on them and handed them in. I got an A, she got an F. We proved our point! We were in the right!”

“Oh my God, Phil!”

“Well, we were!”

Julie finally snapped. “Do you think they see that about you? Do you!? Because they don’t! They see the boy who’s been getting into fights for the past two years, who wears leather jackets and cut jeans with safety pins and listens to records with nothing but British people screaming on them! Who hangs out with druggies and got _arrested,_ for God's sake!”

She paused to catch her breath.

“And yes, you were in the right! You’re almost always in the right! But I’m here to tell you right now, Philip James Coulson, you’ve almost always gone about it the wrong way! And now you're going to get expelled, and she's going to get expelled, and Jankowski’s _still_ going to be teaching there, so what good will it have done!? What will have been accomplished except getting you and Denise in a whole ton of trouble!? You are _not_ Steve Rogers, Phil! You are _not_ a supersoldier, and this is _not_ a time of war! The rules _do apply_ to you, and as much as I might wish that weren’t so, I can’t change that!   What your father would have made of this, I can’t even imagine!”

And there it was. He reeled like she’d slapped him across the face. She would have given a year of her life to take those words back.

He was on suspension until the disciplinary committee’s ruling. When they got home, she said nothing to him, imposed no punishments, but went upstairs to her own bedroom, and sat down heavily on the bed.

What was she going to do?

She’d get no help from her family or her in-laws. As far as they were concerned, this was what happened when a single mother tried to raise a teenaged boy on her own. She’d had his teachers, the troop leaders, Pastor Richardson, even Frank all try to talk to him, and it had gone nowhere.

“What am I going to do, Robert?” she asked the picture of her late husband that sat on her nightstand. Her eyes fell on her jewelry box and triggered a memory. She opened one of the drawers and pulled out the card that Mr. Fury had given her at the funeral.

What the hell. She’d tried everything else.

She met the man again for lunch a few days later. He looked a lot older than she remembered him, as if he’d aged a great deal in just a couple of years. Nevertheless, she found she could talk to him, and poured out the whole sorry story out into his sympathetic ears.

He listened intently.

“And I can’t fault his principles. His heart has always been in the right place. He’s a good kid. But he’s angry and rebellious, and all his good intentions end up just doing him harm.”

Mr. Fury – Nick, as he asked her to call him – nodded. “I wonder if you’d let me speak to him…”

“I’d be so grateful if you would. Honestly, I’m at the end of my rope.”

 They arranged for him to come to the house the next day. Julie introduced Nick to a very sullen Phil and then left them in the backyard to talk.

They were out there for hours.

Nick came in first. “I think he’ll be all right. He’s got a good head on his shoulders, once we get it pulled out of his ass. Get him pointed in the right direction, and nothing’s going to stop him.”

She laughed. “I hope you’re right. Thank you for your help.

“Don’t thank me. You already did all the heavy lifting. I just gave him another push.”

“Well, God knows he’s needed more than one,” she replied.

“Have you given any thought to what he’s going to do after he graduates? Because I think I know something that would be a pretty good fit...”

Nick gave her a sales pitch on SHIELD as a career path for a driven young man – and that was definitely something to consider – but left before Phil came back into the house.

When Phil finally did, he sought her out. He looked so tired, and his eyes were red and puffy in a way she hadn’t seen since his father’s funeral. He came into the kitchen and stood before her, staring at his feet.

“I’ve caused you a lot of grief, Mom, and for that I’m sorry.”

Her jaw dropped. No power in the Universe could have prevented her from pulling her into his arms at that moment.

“It’s all right, son. It’s all right. You’re my boy, and I love you so very much.” She held him tightly and kissed his hair.

She never found out what they'd discussed that afternoon, but the change was remarkable. Phil dropped the combative attitude, toned down the rebellion, and managed to stop getting in trouble at school. (Neither he nor Denise faced any consequences from their pointed demonstration. Their suspension was revoked, the disciplinary hearing cancelled, and Mrs. Jankowski suddenly retired from teaching the next week. Julie was pretty sure she knew who to thank for that and found it a little bit unnerving.) Phil kept his taste for that terrible music, but Julie Coulson knew full well the worth of being gracious in victory, so she scrimped and saved and got him one of those Walkman cassette players, and thus was tranquility restored to the household.

Phil’s disciplinary record kept him from being the class valedictorian, but the day he walked across the stage at graduation – as a newly minted Eagle Scout, no less – she felt like a ten-ton weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

….

However, let’s not forget, Julie Coulson was a very human woman, and all mothers are due some measure of revenge.

….

From the very beginning of his freshman year, Phil excelled at SHIELD’s Operations Academy, and Julie was absolutely thrilled. He was getting a good college education, a good start in life, and it wasn’t costing her a dime. From his frequent letters home (and his somewhat rarer phone calls) he was enjoying his classes, even the PT, and making lots of friends. When he called and asked if he could bring his girlfriend home for Thanksgiving, she’d grinned widely and said yes, absolutely elated for him and the changes that two years had wrought. (He’d not had a girlfriend in high school, but that was largely because he spent three years pining over Jeannie Bueller from across town. Julie had always considered the girl to be sour-faced and unpleasant, and had been quite relieved when she wouldn’t give him the time of day.)

“There’s just one thing, Mom…” There came a rustling noise on the line, as if he was curving his body around the pay phone so as not to be heard in the middle of the dormitory hall. “Can you take down the posters in my room before we get there?” he whispered.

“What? Whatever for?”

“I’d just… I’d just appreciate it if you did, is all.”

“If I get a chance, I will.”

“Thanks, Mom. You’re the best!”

After they’d finished the call, she went into his room and looked around. She hadn’t been in here since he’d left and it was the same as it had been for ages. In fact, the only addition in years had been the poster he’d had made up that said, “A man can accomplish anything when he realizes he's a part of something bigger. A team of people that share that conviction can change the world.” The rest were just band posters, and his old Captain America collection…

There it was.

He was afraid of looking like a nerd in front of his first girlfriend.

He was taking the wrong approach, of course. He’d be miserable if he had to pretend to be someone other than he was to keep this girl happy. And she knew equally well he wouldn’t listen to her if she told him that. She looked around the room again.

No, she decided, grinning, she’d be too busy. The holidays were always rough at work and after all, she hadn’t updated the photo albums with his baby pictures in quite some time…

Julie’s first impression of Melinda May, after the airport cab dropped them off at the front door, was that she was a quiet, polite, pretty girl, and that Phil obviously thought she hung the moon.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Coulson,” said Melinda.

“The pleasure’s all mine, my dear. But please, call me Julie. I’m so glad you could come. Phil, she’ll sleep in your room and you’ll take the couch downstairs. Why don’t you show Melinda where that is, and take her bags up?”

“Sure thing… this way, Mel.” He led her up the stairs.

They vanished upstairs for some time. Julie smiled to herself as she set about preparing dinner and when it was ready, she called them down to eat. Melinda looked pleased as punch as she came down the stairs.

Phil, on the other hand, looked like he’d just dodged a bullet.

He didn’t say anything until Melinda excused herself to go to the restroom.

“Mom, we’d talked about the posters…” he said, agitated.

Julie plastered on her best guileless smile. “Sorry, Phil, I just didn’t have time. You know how things get this time of year,” she shrugged. “Did she have a problem with them?”

“No, she laughed! She thinks they’re awesome!”

“Well, then, where’s the problem?”

His reply was cut off by Melinda’s return to the table.

And if he thought he was off the hook, Phil was quite mistaken. As they were clearing up afterwards, Julie snapped her fingers.

“Phil, I just realized – I forgot the onion strings for the green beans tomorrow, and I just can’t stomach going out again. Would you mind terribly running down to Dominick’s to pick some up?”

“Sure, Mom, no problem…” he turned to Melinda, but Julie beat him to the punch.

“Why don’t you stay here with me, Melinda, and we can get better acquainted?” Julie turned to look at Phil. And here it was. Her moment of vengeance. Payback for every angry phone call, every sleepless night, every grey hair. She took a deep breath to savor the moment.

“I can drag out the photo albums, and we can take a look at Phil’s baby pictures.”

Phil’s eyes went wide in horror, but a sportive grin spread across Melinda’s face.

“I’d like that very much,” she said. Julie stifled a matching smile. She was starting to like this girl.

“Then that’s settled,” said Julie. “Go on, Phil. Take some money from my purse, and the keys are on the hook.”

“Okay.” The poor boy’s voice actually cracked. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and he gave one anguished look back at the pair of them before heading off into the night.

After the door closed, Julie turned to Melinda. “You don’t have to feel obligated to look at our family photos, if you’re not up for it,” she said kindly. “I’ll level with you: most of that display was to torment my son.”

“Oh, I definitely picked up on that.” Melinda grinned mischievously, but her expression then turned a bit shy. “But I really do want to see the pictures…”

“Well...” said Julie, "He made a reproduction of Captain America's uniform one year that was really impressive." She headed over to the bookshelves.

Yeah. She definitely liked this girl.

 

Late that night, Julie peeked down into the living room from the stairwell. However embarrassed Phil might have been, the ordeal didn’t seem to have done any lasting damage: they were curled up in each other’s arms on the couch, watching an old movie. Julie fully expected that there would be some nocturnal creeping – she remembered very well what it was like to be nineteen and in love – but as long as the noises didn’t get too rhythmic, she was fully prepared to turn a deaf ear.

Julie silently padded her way back to bed, her heart light. If someone had told her, in the worst of everything that had happened, that their situation would have turned out this well, she would have thought them crazy. And she still didn’t trust it – looking ahead for the next crisis had become too ingrained a habit to let go of easily.

But this was a good start.

**Author's Note:**

> I did play a little fast and loose with dates here - Coulson was born in 1964, which would make him 16 in 1980. The Straight Edge punk movement didn't really get started until the early eighties with Minor Threat's first album, and Jeannie Bueller was 18 in 1986. But, in both cases, they were too good and useful to pass up. :)
> 
> And there really was a moral panic in the 80s about [Dungeons and Dragons, basically arguing that it lead to witchcraft and demon-summoning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_controversies). Which is pretty funny, because generally the only stuff that really gets summoned at your average D&D night is from Pizza Hut...


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